STAR TREK - VOY - 05 - Incident At Arbuk

VIP免费
2024-12-20 0 0 291.29KB 118 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Star Trek - Voy - 005 - Incident At Arbuk
By: John Greggory Betancourt
Copyright 1995
CHAPTER 1
Captain's Log, Stardate 48135.6
We are proceeding toward Federation space, continuing our survey of the Delta Quadrant. We have
encountered few class-M planets in this sector, and fewer still sentient races. Food supplies, always a
critical concern, are running low; we may have to divert power to the replicators soon if hydroponics
yields continue at their present low level. Crew morale remains high, thanks to the constant efforts of Mr.
Neelix, and I remain hopeful of our eventual return home.
Ensign Harry Kim frowned down at the communications console.
Something odd was going on here, he thought. Was that low-band flutter a signal? He leaned forward to
study the flickering digital readouts more carefully and felt his heart beginning to pound. Then the static
seemed to clear for a second and he heard what might have been frantic words in an alien language. Or
was it his imagination? He couldn't quite seem to lock down the frequency. ...
"Is something wrong, Ensign?" Captain Janeway asked him.
Harry glanced up, found himself the sole object of the captain's attention, swallowed, and felt himself
blush. Her piercing blue eyes held more than casual interest; it was as if she were seeing into his thoughts
and knew he'd found something interesting. In short, the captain could read him like one of her
holonovels.
He'd better learn to mask his excitement better, he thought.
He wished for a second that he could be as blas‚ about encounters with new cultures and civilizations as
Tom Paris and the other bridge officers, but he couldn't help himself. He hadn't done this as often as they
had--hadn't done it at all before his first mission on the Voyager--and every time they came upon
something or someone new, it was a true first contact, one for the record books back home.
"No, Captain," he said quickly, running a hand through his short black hair to buy more time. "Uh-- yes, I
mean, maybe. I'm picking up what looks like a signal from the binary star system ahead."
"What kind of signal?" She tilted her head a little to the side, regarding him with interest.
"It's hard to tell with all this static. It may just be random noise caused by some natural phenomenon."
There, he thought, that should cover all my bases. He met her gaze, waiting for orders.
"But you don't think so," Captain Janeway prompted.
"No, Captain," he said. Like a holonovel. How did she do it?
He swallowed again. "I caught what I thought were frantic words a moment ago. It may be a distress
signal."
She nodded curtly. "Get it cleaned up enough to understand, Ensign. I want to know what it says." She
turned to the others on the bridge.
"Mr. Tuvok, get me a complete readout on that system. Mr. Paris, alter course, warp three. I want a
closer look."
"Yes, Captain," Tom said from the navigation station.
Harry watched his friend lock in the coordinates, then forced his own attention back to the
communications console. The readouts still fluttered a bit, sending more flickers through the green and
amber lights. Quickly he locked it down. Pay attention, he mentally reprimanded himself. The captain
expected results, and he intended to give them to her. If he'd learned anything from his months aboard
Voyager, it was that a hundred and ten percent effort got the job done to Janeway's satisfaction--and she
would have preferred a hundred and twenty percent.
First things first, though. Harry began to filter out all the high-band emissions. One of his instructors at
Starfleet Academy, Dr. Dorian Schweitzer, had once compared honing in on a distant signal to creating a
sculpture from a block of marble.
"The trick," Dr. Schweitzer had said, strutting up and down before the podium in his gray one-piece suit
with his arms behind his back, tossing his shock of white hair this way and that as he raked his sea green
eyes over the class, "is in viewing a clouded signal as a buried structure. Like the sculptor who chips
away everything from a block of marble except his statue; you must eliminate every signal except the one
you're looking for."
At the time Harry had thought it a far-fetched analogy, but over the months on Voyager he'd come to see
the truth of it. This distress call, for example, fit Dr. Schweitzer's example. He knew the signal existed; he
merely had to uncover it.
He began to slide down the frequency range, eliminating one noise source after another. Still static buzzed
in his ear. Biting his lip in frustration, he continued to work.
"I have that report, Captain," Tuvok said in his low, even voice from the security station.
"Let's hear it," Janeway said.
"We are approaching a binary star system composed of a red giant orbited by a white dwarf. There are
no planets, no asteroids, and little in the way of cosmic debris. The gravitational pulls of both stars,
coupled with their strong gravimetric fields, virtually prohibit any orbiting bodies. Logically, the signal
must therefore originate from a ship or a starbase of some sort.
If Mr. Kim is correct and there is a signal, of course."
Harry, half listening, felt his ears begin to burn. There was a signal, he told himself. He'd heard it.
He shot a quick glance at Mr. Tuvok, but the Vulcan's dark-skinned face was turned away. Was he
being sarcastic? Were Vulcans ever sarcastic? Harry didn't think he'd ever know the answer to either
question. As much as Harry's grandmother had insisted the gateway to the soul lay through the eyes,
Harry had never been able to read anything in Tuvok's eyes.
Sarcasm or not, he had a job to do, and staring at Tuvok's back wasn't going to help. The Vulcan, arms
braced against the console as he leaned forward to examine the readout with a perfectionist's attention to
detail, looked like he'd be there for the next half hour.
I'll show him, Harry thought suddenly. He quickly locked out two more nearby quasars, which had been
spitting radio waves like Morse code, and continued through the process of eliminating all the outside
noise.
It's just like they taught at Starfleet Academy, he thought. This exercise could have been out of one of Dr.
Schweitzer's communications texts.
Suddenly a dickering, ghostlike image appeared on his monitor.
Harry found himself staring into the face of an alien the like of which he'd never seen before. What
looked like writhing gray tentacles covered the top of its elongated head. It had a small, round mouth, but
no eyes, ears, or nose that he could see--in fact, no apparent external sensory organs of any kind. But it
proved him right, he thought with a touch of satisfaction. The alien was gesturing wildly with its arms, and
he could see its mouth moving, but he had no sound as yet.
And then the picture vanished again, lost in a burst of static.
They were just too far away, he thought with a twinge of disappointment. He'd have to try something else
to get through.
He had one last trick. Instead of using the ship's communications arrays to pick up the signal, he manually
routed the pickup through the ship's internal wiring, Voyager might be the most advanced ship in the fleet,
with all kinds bioelectric couplings, but it still had more than its share of old-fashioned wires. He'd once
overheard Dr. Schweitzer bragging about successfully picking up a faint Romulan signal by using his
whole ship as a receiver. But would it work for him?
His long fingers danced across the controls, rerouting the communications arrays to auxiliary channels. He
couldn't just shut them off, he thought, in case an important message came through. Then, keeping his
attention tightly focused on the main readouts, he experimented with channeling signal feeds from
subsystems. It wasn't in any of the official manuals, but he thought it just might work.
The moment he finished rerouting the pickup, interstellar static roared over the channel. Wincing, he
lowered the volume. So much for the music of the spheres, he thought. Now that he no longer had the
automatic fine-tuning abilities of the communications arrays at his command, he would have to manually
filter out all the low-band noise.
He started by once again locking out the two quasars' signals, and the moment he did, he heard another
burst of frantic-sounding words, this time accompanied by a flickery image. He sighed with relief. He
hadn't made a fool out of himself. Then he grinned; B'Elanna and Chakotay weren't the only ones with
tricks up their sleeves.
He continued the filtration process and was rewarded when he finally got a firm lock on the picture. From
the alien's frantic gestures and words, he figured it had to be a distress call.
He'd been right on that one, too. He nodded slowly to himself, did a little more fine-tuning, then looked at
Captain Janeway.
"Captain," he announced. "I have a low-level audio and video signal."
"On the front screen when you're ready, Mr. Kim." The captain looked up and tapped her comm link.
"Neelix, report to the bridge, please."
Harry routed the signal to the large viewscreen at the front of the bridge. On such a large monitor the
image's poor quality seemed a hundred times worse. White static crawled across the picture, and frames
dropped out every second or two. Maybe he could do a little more fine-tuning. He tried adjusting the
stabilizers, but even with the computer helping to compensate and with Voyager drawing steadily nearer
to the broadcast source, the picture stubbornly refused to improve.
Harry realized he'd been holding his breath and forced himself to exhale. The picture wasn't going to get
any clearer. He glanced around the bridge. The rest of the crew seemed just as spellbound, he thought,
even Tom and Chakotay. Perhaps they weren't as blas‚ about first contacts after all.
"I'm afraid I can't get a better lock on the signal," he said half-apologetically.
"Considering the type and strength of the signal," Tuvok said dryly, "you should not be picking it up at all.
Your work is above reproach, Ensign."
"Agreed, well done, Mr. Kim," Captain Janeway said, glancing back at him. "Now it's time for another
miracle. Can we send a message back to the alien?"
"We can try," Harry said, "but I don't think there's any chance of it receiving our transmission. Its
equipment is nowhere near as sophisticated or as powerful as Voyager's."
The alien continued its frantic speech, still gesticulating wildly.
Its language was glottal but articulated, full of weird grunts and whistles. It sounded afraid, Harry thought,
and when it raised two quivering hands in what might have been a gesture of supplication, he thought it
seemed somehow desperate.
"What are our chances of a translation?" Captain Janeway asked.
"None yet," Harry said. "The computer has been unable to identify any of what it's saying."
"Your analysis, Mr. Tuvok?" she asked, turning to look at him.
"He would appear to be in some distress," the Vulcan said.
"There is nothing noticeably wrong with his craft that I can see from this transmission, but without any real
familiarity with its design, I cannot be certain I would notice if something had malfunctioned.
Caution would seem to be indicated, however. If his craft is caught in a gravimetric tide of some sort, we
do not want to suffer the same fate."
"Noted, Mr. Tuvok," Captain Janeway said. "However, I will not ignore a distress call."
"I did not recommend ignoring it," Tuvok said evenly. "I merely recommended caution as we approach."
Harry's gaze drifted beyond the alien to the interior of its small spaceship. Gleaming silver
globes--controls of some sort, he assumed--covered one whole wall; another held a large round
viewport that faced out upon stars and the red giant that made up half of this star system. The red giant
wasn't a true red in color, he noticed.
Yellows and oranges and browns mottled its surface, surging in flares, deepening in sunspots.
He blinked. The red giant was growing steadily larger, he realized.
The alien's ship seemed to be spinning lazily, as if it were out of control.
"Captain--" he began.
"I see it, Mr. Kim," she said. "He does indeed appear to be drifting.
Maximum speed, Mr. Paris. Get me an estimated time of arrival."
"Aye, Captain," Tom said.
Harry felt the almost undetectable distant thrum of the engines deepen through the soles of his feet as
Tom increased their warp.
He only hoped they'd be in time to help.
Tom continued, "One hour and fifty-three minutes until we enter the system. One hour and fifty-nine
minutes until we reach his present position. His ship will have drifted behind the white dwarf by the time
we arrive, however."
"Open hailing frequencies," Captain Janeway said. "We'll try a message."
"Aye, Captain," Harry said, complying.
Janeway stepped forward to face the viewscreen. Her back grew even straighter as she drew herself up
to her full height, and Harry heard the crack of authority in her voice when she spoke: "This is Captain
Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager. We are responding to your call. Is your ship in
trouble? Is there anything we can do to assist you?"
The alien continued to jabber frantically. If it heard her, it made no sign. It didn't, Harry thought suddenly.
There's no way it could have picked up our message. He found he'd been hoping that some fluke, some
trick of subspace like the one that had first brought the distress call to him, would in return bring their
message to the alien. But that had been too much to expect.
Then a jolt of surprise shot through him. What was that?
Slowly, through the little ship's viewport, another vessel had begun to come into view. He saw one large
group of misshapen silver globules connected by tiny gray tubes, then another, then another. It looked
like an old-fashioned model of a molecule, he thought, only without a molecule's grace and structure. This
ship seemed to be a haphazard jumble of chambers, one linked to another with no sense of design or
purpose that he could discern.
Then he realized the silver globules weren't malformed, but melted.
Some great blast of energy had half turned them to slag.
Harry felt his heart begin to pound again. It's been through a battle, he thought. We're heading right into a
war zone.
The alien glanced out its viewport, saw the damaged vessel, whistled frantically--and then the picture cut
out. White static hissed and spat across the screen. Harry quickly put up a forward view of the two stars
in the binary system.
"What happened?" Captain Janeway demanded.
"It stopped transmitting," he said.
She paused a second, frowning, then tapped her comm link again.
"Neelix to the bridge!" she said.
***
When the ship's intercom chirped and Captain Janeway said "Neelix to the bridge!" for the second time,
Neelix sighed, wiped his hands on his food-spattered yellow-and-pink checked apron, and tapped his
own badge, which he had pinned to his bright orange-and-purple striped shirt.
"I'm quite busy with lunch preparations, Captain," he said. "Can it wait?" That woman needed to learn
patience, he thought. It was the one virtue she seemed to lack.
"Not this time," she said.
"Then I'm on my way."
Sighing, he turned to survey the ship's galley. Pots containing bright blue, green, and pink liquids bubbled,
steamed, or stewed, letting off the most delicious aromas. He had spent the last two hours rushing from
one cooking vessel to the next, first stirring, then seasoning, then tasting, then stirring again, but all that
might be wasted now.
The captain didn't seem to care about the vast efforts he expended on her behalf to prepare the crew's
meals. In fact, as far as he could tell, everyone aboard--Federation and Maquis alike--placed little or no
real value on his time and sweat.
He blamed replicators. Instant food--feh, what an insult to the sensitive palate. Sometimes he thought the
crew actually preferred synthetics to his gourmet creations.
Still, perhaps he could save lunch. He needed an assistant, someone who could look after things for a
few minutes. Normally he would have asked Kes, but she was busy studying Federation medical texts
with the holographic doctor and he knew how important that was to her. But maybe he could find
someone else.
Fortunately Paul Fairman happened to be standing behind him. The ensign was a tall blond man with a
short beard who had been part of the Maquis ship's crew before their integration with Voyager's.
Fairman didn't seem particularly busy; in fact, if anything he was being a nuisance.
"I need you to stir the pots until I get back," Neelix said, suddenly making up his mind and thrusting a
large wooden spoon into Fairman's hand.
"Me?" Fairman protested, trying to hand it back. "Oh, no!
Absolutely not! I came here to ask a favor, not get drafted into kitchen duty!"
Neelix sighed. Despite all their technological advances, humans just didn't understand the way the galaxy
worked. Fairman was a typical example.
"Let me explain the barter process," he said, trying to keep it slow and simple. Fairman had been
following him through the galley for the last half hour, badgering him to scrounge up a portable external
power supply--something small that could be used in the privacy of his cabin.
"You do something for me," Neelix said, "then in exchange I do something for you. It's a basic trade of
goods and services. Surely humans grasp it."
"It's a matter of unsuitability in my case," Fairman protested.
"As everyone on board knows, you are a master chef; I have never been this near a stove before in my
life."
"I know, I know," Neelix said, letting a bit of Fairman's whine echo in his own voice, "you're just a poor
mercenary who hired on with the Maquis to fight Cardassians and got sucked out to the Delta Quadrant
against your will. But you eat the same as everyone else on board, and that means you can pitch in here
for a few minutes."
"But I know I'll do something wrong and ruin your preparations."
"I'll take the risk!" Neelix said. Why was it always an argument with humans? "Stir the pots for me until I
get back, and I'll look into finding you that power supply!"
Fairman brightened. "You will?"
"Just... stir!" Neelix blamed his reputation: he'd always said he could get anything for anybody, and what
did he ask in return?
Nothing but a little respect. Well, it was time to collect.
"I'll try." Fairman took a deep breath and regarded the spoon as if it were some poisonous insect that had
crawled from the woodwork. "What do I do first?"
Neelix began pointing to pots. "Make sure that one doesn't boil over, that one doesn't burn, and above
all keep stirring!" He pushed the spoon's bowl-end into a steaming pot of finely chopped yellow phu and
made a circular motion with one finger. Humans could be absolutely clueless at times, he thought with
near despair.
Slowly, his distaste for the chore obvious, Fairman began to stir the pot.
"That's it!" Neelix cried. He ran for the doors, shouting over his shoulder, "I'll be back as soon as I can!"
He bounded up the gently curving corridor. What could the captain possibly want from him this time, he
wondered. Whatever it was, he'd get it for her. As always, it would be Neelix to the rescue. He had a
reputation to protect, after all.
He entered the turbolift. "Bridge," he said, and it whisked him up toward his destination. How Janeway
and the Federation ever managed to get so far without him, he didn't know....
CHAPTER 2
"Mr. Neelix," Captain Janeway said a bit sternly when the little alien strolled onto the bridge. She had to
be careful in her choice of words, she knew; she needed Neelix and Kes a lot more than they needed
Voyager, and Neelix in particular seemed to have an all too fragile ego. "As part of this ship's crew," she
said, "I would appreciate it if you put top priority on my orders."
"Of course, Captain," he said. "As you know, I've always placed your needs highest on my list of
priorities."
"That's not quite what I meant," Janeway began. Then she gave a mental sigh: Neelix just didn't think the
way humans did, and he wasn't going to change no matter what she said. He was staring at her with
wide, innocent eyes. How could she reprimand him for not understanding the way things worked on a
Federation starship?
She was having enough trouble getting the Maquis to bend to Federation rules.
"Never mind," she said. She gave a nod to the forward monitor, which now showed a close-up of the
binary star system they were approaching, the fiery red giant orbited by a white dwarf. "Do you know
anything about this system?"
Neelix squinted up at the viewscreen and seemed to search his memory.
"The big red star looks familiar," he said after a long moment.
Janeway felt a surge of hope. "Ah, yes, now I recognize it--the Arbuk system, of course." He waved a
hand dismissively at it. "There's nothing there, Captain. Nothing of interest, anyway--no planets, no food,
no resources of any kind. Best to steer clear of it. If I remember my charts correctly, I believe there are
some pretty strong gravimetric currents around that white dwarf."
"Thank you," Janeway said.
"Is that all?" he asked.
"One more thing." She turned and nodded to Harry Kim, who began a playback of the alien's
transmission. As Neelix watched, Janeway tried to gauge his reaction. She thought she saw puzzlement.
When he began nodding, she knew he recognized the alien's species. Perhaps he'd be able to shed some
light on what was going on after all.
"What can you tell us?" she asked him.
"It's just a Sperian," he said with a dismissive wave, "nothing to be concerned about."
"It appears to be a distress call," she said. "I think that's cause for concern."
"The Sperians are always very animated talkers. It's one of their many, many, many annoying traits, and I
strongly suggest leaving them and this system strictly alone."
"Do you understand their language?"
"Not a word." From the way he puffed out his chest, he seemed almost proud of the fact, Janeway
thought. It was as though he took great personal satisfaction from his ignorance, which seemed quite
unlike him. There had to be more going on here than she saw on the surface.
"But you've dealt with them," she prompted.
"Unfortunately, yes. The few dealings I've had with them have all been through middlemen. Now, if you'd
asked me about the Cyclets of Mernical Three or the Bandacians of Ordinia Nine, well, I could provide
you with any manner of details--" Janeway, feeling her patience beginning to fray, cut him off with a curt
wave. "Yes, but I need to know about Sperians now. Is there anything else you can tell me?
Anything at all helpful in dealing with them?"
"Such as...?" Neelix asked.
Was he being deliberately obtuse? If so, two could play at that game, Janeway thought. If he wanted her
to drag the information out of him bit by bit, she'd do it.
"Well," she said slowly, "are they involved in any wars or long-standing conflicts which might suddenly
have erupted into violence?"
"The Sperians?" Neelix threw back his head and laughed. "In two words, im-possible. Everyone in this
quadrant avoids them, and with good reason. You can waste days arguing with a Sperian over trivialities.
The last time I dealt with one--and this was through a middleman, mind you--it took me an extra three
weeks to buy a cargo of dabinroot simply because the Sperian argued over every detail of the transaction
from start to finish, whether it was in his best interests or not. It annoyed him no end when I finally gave in
on every point just to get on with my trip."
"So they're argumentative," she mused.
"No," he said, "they are beyond argumentative. They have raised haggling to a fine art. It has become so
ingrained in their culture and in their psyche that they have to argue. Not even the Kazon bother them. It's
simply not worth the effort. And if someone were foolish enough to actually conquer them--my mind
boggles at the thought of the bureaucracy that would spring up to even attempt to assimilate their
society."
Neelix leaned forward and dropped his voice to an almost conspiratorial whisper. Janeway found herself
leaning forward, too, and had to force herself to stop. Neelix had an almost infectious influence on all of
those around him, she thought.
"That," Neelix said, "is why I refuse to deal with Sperians unless it can't possibly be avoided. I get into
quite enough pointless arguments already, thank you, without Sperians."
"That's very interesting," Janeway said. "Thank you, Mr. Neelix.
As always, your advice has been invaluable."
He shook his head sadly. "But you're not going to take it," he said almost accusingly.
"I'm afraid I can't pass by a distress call, no matter who it's from."
"You'll be sorry."
"Quite possibly," she admitted.
"Is that all?"
"I'll let you know if we need anything further."
Neelix threw up his hands in seeming despair and hurried back toward the turbolift. "She called me up
here just to ask about an empty system and Sperians," Janeway heard him muttering.
"Sperians! If lunch is ruined..."
The doors closed around him. Janeway took a deep, cleansing breath and noticed Chakotay trying to
hide a smile. Infectious indeed, she thought. Sometimes you needed to laugh to break the tension, but this
didn't strike her as one of those times. From the look of things, that Sperian was in serious trouble.
"Did I miss something amusing?" she asked her first officer.
"He is quite a character," Chakotay observed. He covered his mouth with his left hand, trying to hide his
expression with a look of serious concern.
Janeway decided to let it pass. She glanced back at the communications station. "Any luck in
reestablishing contact with the Sperian, Ensign?" she asked Harry Kim.
"No, Captain," he said. "I'm still trying, but I'm not getting anything " "Keep at it," she said. She turned to
Chakotay. "You have the bridge, Commander. I'll be in my ready room. Call me if there's any change."
"Aye, Captain," he said.
Two hours to kill, she thought. Time to try to catch up on my paperwork. And maybe a soothing cup of
coffee...
***
Fifteen minutes wasn't long, Neelix thought optimistically as he rushed back toward the galley. He called
cheerful greetings to the half-dozen crewmen he passed, and they nodded back. How much damage
could one human have done to lunch in just fifteen minutes? All Fairman had to do was stir a few pots,
after all.
It was so simple a spindle-kitten could have done it with five paws tied behind its metathorax.
As he neared the galley, however, a feeling of supreme dread came over him. For a second he couldn't
figure out what was wrong.
摘要：

StarTrek-Voy-005-IncidentAtArbukBy:JohnGreggoryBetancourtCopyright1995CHAPTER1Captain'sLog,Stardate48135.6WeareproceedingtowardFederationspace,continuingoursurveyoftheDeltaQuadrant.Wehaveencounteredfewclass-Mplanetsinthissector,andfewerstillsentientraces.Foodsupplies,alwaysacriticalconcern,arerunnin...

展开>> 收起<<
STAR TREK - VOY - 05 - Incident At Arbuk.pdf

共118页,预览24页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：118 页 大小：291.29KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-20

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 118
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注